Why Adapting at Work Is a Challenge

Daniel Goleman is author of the international best-seller Emotional Intelligence and Optimal: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day. He is a regular contributor to Korn Ferry. 

We are living in what organizational consultant Gisela Wendling calls "volatile ambiguity"—a state in which the rules are changing faster than we can adopt and adapt to them. One week AI is transforming our meetings. The week after that, it's reshaping entire industries. The next week, we question whether the skills we've spent our entire lives building will even matter over the next five years. For leaders guiding teams through this constant flux, there's a term that captures what we are all experiencing: liminality.

Liminality is from the Latin word limen, meaning threshold. This word describes the space between what was and what will be—the place where old rules no longer apply and new ones have yet to emerge. Anthropologists have studied liminal spaces for over a century, recognizing them as periods of both profound disorientation and transformative potential. In the early 1900’s, the French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep wrote The Rites of Passage, in which he argued that the rituals marking major life transitions follow a three-stage structure: separation (a detachment from what was), liminal stage (the "betwixt and between" phase) and incorporation (when the new is fully integrated into reality). The question isn't whether we're in liminal space—we clearly are. The question is whether we have the emotional intelligence to navigate it.

This is where adaptability becomes essential. In emotional-intelligence terms, adaptability is the capacity to adjust strategies, juggle competing demands, and remain flexible in the face of change. It is precisely what determines whether a liminal period becomes a crucible for growth or an era of permanent instability.

Research shows adaptability is one of the strongest predictors of career success and life satisfaction. In follow-up studies with MBA graduates five to nineteen years after finishing their degrees, adaptability predicted not just career success but overall life satisfaction better than other emotional intelligence competencies such as influence of achievement orientation. In rapidly changing environments like the ones we are in, this makes sense. But less obvious is that adaptability isn't just about being flexible and easy about change. It's about developing the muscles to stay in discomfort long enough for something genuinely new to emerge.

Wendling's research on liminal spaces reveals a critical insight: when people exit liminal periods too quickly—grasping for certainty before real transformation can occur—they often recreate old patterns with new labels. On the other hand, when they stay too long without moving forward, they risk what anthropologists call "permanent liminality," in which the threshold loses its transformative power and becomes a state of perpetual drift.

This means that leaders who are low in adaptability are more prone to one of these extremes. They either rush for solutions and recreate the old reality with a new name, or they hang back and wait, letting go of their agency and their power to make a real transformation.

The adaptable leader recognizes the liminal for what it is. They understand that AI isn't just a tool to be deployed but a force creating threshold moments across every dimension of work. Rather than rushing to closure or wallowing in uncertainty, they develop what Wendling calls a "possibility mindset,” the ability to see multiple futures emerging and adjust course as the landscape shifts.

Consider how AI is reshaping work. Jobs that seemed secure five years ago now feel uncertain. Skills that took years to develop can be replicated by algorithms in seconds. But AI is also creating opportunities that didn't exist before—new roles, new ways of creating value, new forms of human contribution that machines can't replicate. The leaders who navigate this successfully aren't the ones who resist change or blindly embrace every new technology. They're the ones who can adapt—listening inside to understand their own reactions, looking outside for new information, and stepping outside their comfort zones to experiment with unfamiliar approaches.

Like all emotional intelligence competencies, adaptability starts with self-awareness—recognizing when we're operating on autopilot and when our habitual responses no longer fit the situation. It requires looking beyond our usual sources of information to seek out perspectives that challenge our thinking. It requires juggling multiple demands. And it asks that we intentionally step into new experiences, even when—and especially when—they make us uncomfortable.

When it comes to getting this right, the stakes are high. Leaders who can't help their teams navigate threshold moments lose people to frustration, apathy or burnout. Organizations that can't adapt to liminal periods risk irrelevance within the next six to 12 months. But those who do develop this capacity may find that liminal spaces become sources of creativity and renewal—that the in-between is not just a chaos to be endured, but a time ripe with hope, opportunity and the potential for new intelligence.

There is no escape route out of the volatile ambiguity we're living through. Forces like AI aren't slowing down. The future belongs to leaders who can hold the tension between what was and what will be long enough for genuine transformation to occur. It belongs to those who can redefine what it means to thrive in the face of change. 

Co-written by Elizabeth Solomon

Click here to learn more about Daniel Goleman's Building Blocks of Emotional Intelligence.